I find your site visually appealing and very simple (good thing). Your charter and rules were all very good and well explained. I especially like how you set forth the guild plan. I think that is a great idea for a new guild with ambitions.

I have only recently become familiar with the SWAPS looting system, so I don't know how that will work out.

I did find it interesting that for a raiding guild you do not have anything scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights, the biggest raiding nights of the week. I understand that many people like to have those nights off for RL reasons. But for some people Fri/Sat nights are their big nights to play WoW. Raid scheduling is very difficult, but can be worked out later from feedback from guild members.

I think it's really cool that you are blogging about your experience starting a raiding guild and I imagine others will find it both interesting and informative. I wish you luck with your new guild. =)

This will be very interesting to follow... wish you luck with assembling the guild. Can be hard to find the right people... especially when starting up the guild. It takes time to get the raids going smooth etc and not all new members understand that.

What nights you raid on should really be voted on by the guild. I used to raid every Fri/Sat night which is okay some of the time, but every once and awhile people want to go out and do RL stuff.

I have always liked the idea of raiding on weekends during the day. It really depends on what your members can do, but it always seems to me whatever guild I am in that there are people on during the day just passing the time til that night's raid.

I think you should also change up the schedule. This way people that can't make a raid on one night this week and make it on another night next week. This also allows people to say have every other Friday night off so that they can maintian a social life. =)

Having the week's raid schedule up in advance is important too. RL is more important than WoW, but somethings you can and may want to schedule around raiding.

On myserver the raid guild with older members are friday/saturday, and the raid guilds with younger members are during the week. The top guild says they raid 5 days a week and you need to be free for 5 hours each day. holy crap.

I am probably going to apply to the older guild soon, they are actually in BWL and thankfully are more concerned with attitude than gear. Though I do still need to gear up some more :)

I think that Coriel is doing the right thing by pre-specifying the raid nights. And ESPECIALLY the right thing by making them rigid in format.

About the first point: this is a brand new guild. If you don't like the raid nights, then you won't join. If people sign up without knowing when the guild raids and then vote on the night, you may end up losing a whole bunch of players who thought you 'might' raid on their chosen night. That, and by specifying the nights ahead of time, it shows that Coriel has a plan in place and knows where she wants to take the guild. Which is an important draw for players... it demonstrates a strong leader who knows what she wants.

Besides, if you look at the guild's format, it ISN'T a democracy... its modelled after a monarchy where the King or Queen reigns supreme.

About the second point: How would you like if if your favorite TV show moved time slots every week? I mean, wouldn't the show get more viewers that way? One week, you could watch it on Thursday nights, and the next week, in order to catch some extra audience, it might air on Tuesday morning. Oh and the week after that, it's Saturday at noon.

See how confusing that is? Its easier for people to meet a regularly scheduled event than it is to try and keep track of when that event will happen the next week.

And again, its also about not being a wishy-washy leader. Coriel can't afford to be indecisive. Not at the start of the guild's life, and certainly not in the middle or at the end.

Of course, if Coriel had the guild up and running for a month or two, and a large majority of her members asked to move one raid night, I'm sure she'd understand and quite possibly move it. Somehow I doubt she'd be silly enough to just ignore her guild. But again, the decision is hers and its important to present that strong front.

Wow carp you obviously took my comment the wrong way. I was merely saying that come people like to raid on the weekends. I have played with many people that work all during the week (some worked the night shift) and they always looked forward to the weekend because that is when they could really dedicate the time.

Yes I will agree that having set raid dates and times is a good thing. And routine is good. But you don't want to turn people away from your guild because they can't raid those nights.

Something you could do about dkp, early, is just roll items but distribute the minimum dkp to everyone who didn't get the item. After a run or two, you would have a good base of dkp for everyone and could start using your system.

I notice you "seed" the dkp system instead. I'm sure that will work well too, but I'm not sure it's something you want to do once you have an established dkp market going: because the seed dkp is arbitrary in comparison to the raider's earned dkp - they get it for free.

"But you don't want to turn people away from your guild because they can't raid those nights."

but carp is saying you DO want to.if people can only raid certain nights, it's better to have those nights the raid nights, then if a potential new member can't , he can find a guild that raids the nights he wants to.

he took it the right way. but those of us who have experience in project management can tell you that limiting things at the beginning, and managing expectations, is a much better way to make guildmates happy. When people know exactly what to expect, and they get their expecations met, they will be happy. If things are not clear, people will have all sorts of different expecations, and some of those people will end up unhappy.

Look at it this way, you have 3 guilds you can join. Let's say everything else is equal. One says they only raid on weekends, the other says they raid on weekdays only, the 3rd says "we don't know yet we will get more people and vote". You would pick the one that you KNOW RIGHT NOW can go when you want to, why pick a guild where aren't sure and things might likely change and then you suddenly can't play with them? You'd have wasted all that time.

I just finished another one your posts in the Guild Relations forum and I must say that you seem to have everything very well thought out Coriel. Your guild sounds like it will be alot of fun. I can't wait to see how you do.